El Castillo Cave: where are the most ancient drawings of man

The oldest work of art that man created is in the Spanish cave of El Castillo in Cantabria. The uncomplicated paintings that adorn the walls are supposedly 40,800 years old, and this is a truly astounding figure. The cave was found at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, accurate dating became possible only a few years ago.

Cave entrance

On the walls and ceiling of El Castillo, there are more than a hundred different images, all painted with charcoal and red ocher. Most of them are very simple: red discs and hand cliches. Also among all these unpretentious arts one can see more complex ones: there is an image of a mammoth, aurochs, bison and other animals that the ancient artist saw.

Cro-Magnons, the earliest representatives of modern man, arrived in Europe from Africa about 41,500 years ago. Before that, only Neanderthals who lived here for about 200-300 thousand years were only in these territories. But the drawings in El Castillo made scientists argue: did modern people bring painting with them or did their authorship belong to Neanderthals? Today, amazing discoveries have been made from the realm of Neanderthal life: they created jewelry, tiny art objects, pigments to color their body. And a few decades ago it was believed that Neanderthals are not capable of symbolic thinking. But if, nevertheless, they were able to create simple jewelry, probably they had the ability to think, and a simple language was also developed.

True, not all researchers share the view that paintings in El Castillo are the work of a Neanderthal artist. After all, how can one explain the fact that they ran around Europe for two hundred, or maybe three hundred thousand years, and did not draw anything in their caves? And only after the modern man came here, the first painting appeared? Moreover, there is evidence that modern man nevertheless left marks earlier: simple symbols made by ocher were discovered on stones in Africa.

In any case, these drawings indicate when the first painting arose. Probably, it was already part of the Cro-Magnon culture, and perhaps it was just born after they arrived in Europe. And this dating is an incredible discovery, because it is evidence of the evolution of modern man: it was then that people began to move to a more imaginative way of thinking.